Bump Stock Ban Enacted In Connecticut One Year After Mandalay Bay Shooting

Connecticut’s new bump stock ban, inspired by the shooting in Las Vegas, takes effect today.

As of Oct. 1, 2018, it will be a class D felony to have a bump stock, meaning someone holding onto one could spend up t0 five years behind bars and puts a hefty $5,000 fine on anyone selling, purchasing, possessing or manufacturing bump stocks.

The law has some specific exceptions, such as for military service members.

Connecticut becomes the most recent state to implement their own bump stock bans along with New York, New Jersey, Florida, Washington, Vermont, Oregon, and Rhode Island, according to CNN.

Individual cities in multiple states like Lincoln, Nebraska, and Deerfield, Illinois, have taken actions in their city governments to ban bump stock for residents.

The push to ban bump stocks, which are devices that when installed on a semi-automatic weapon increases the rate of fire to near fully automatic levels, came after 58 people were shot and killed by a gunman using bump stocks on several different weapons in the deadliest mass shooting committed by a single person in modern U.S. history.

Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut approved the ban back in May 2018, where the state Senate voted 26-10 in favor of the banning the accessory.

This takes effect today in Connecticut. https://t.co/ApWM6kH8df

— WFSB Channel 3 (@WFSBnews) October 1, 2018

Democratic politicians in Connecticut have been vocal in their support for the ban.

Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who originally proposed the ban, said after the legislation was approved, “I have yet to hear one legitimate reason why anyone needs to own a device that can fire 90 bullets every 10 seconds,” Malloy wrote in a press release. “This vote today shows that we – as policy makers in Connecticut – are listening to the overwhelming, collective voices of the people and not powerful lobbyists from the NRA, who are fighting for opposing interests. But while today’s vote on this bill is one step forward, we must acknowledge that a patchwork of gun safety laws in each individual state isn’t the solution. We must continue to demand federal action by our representatives in Congress to enact these measures on a national basis once and for all. I applaud our lawmakers in Connecticut for their bold leadership on this topic.”

State Senator Beth Bye expressed in a press release on the day the ban was implemented how pleased she was with the ban going into action on the one-year anniversary of the Las Vegas massacre.

“Once again Connecticut has taken yet another step to keep its residents safe from the absolute plague that is gun violence in America,” Bye wrote in her release.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in school, at church, on a military base, in a restaurant, your office, at a movie theater, at a concert, in a government office—mass shootings have almost become a part of the fabric of our everyday lives. And we can’t allow that to happen.

“We have to fight it at every turn, and banning bump stocks in Connecticut is one more way to do that.”